Bank robber gets 4 years, hit with contempt

EVERETT — A convicted bank robber talked his way onto the wrong side of a Snohomish County Superior Court judge Wednesday after he refused to affix his fingerprints to some paperwork.

Judge Michael Downes was patient at first, listening to Stephen Haff’s five-plus minute speech expounding on why the criminal court has no authority to convict or imprison him. Haff, referring to himself as a “third-party creditor,” demanded his immediate release.

“You are a citizen and subject to the same laws as the rest of us,” Downes said.

The judge then sentenced Haff to nearly four years in prison for a 2011 robbery at a Marysville bank.

Haff wasn’t done, though. He said he wasn’t going to allow anyone to roll his fingerprints onto the court record and he wasn’t going to sign any paperwork.

Downes, however, was done.

He ordered Haff to be held in contempt. He warned the man that meant Haff wouldn’t get any credit toward his sentence while he was in defiance of the judge’s orders.